Sacramento ranks high in California's job losses

The latest employment numbers weren't pretty Wednesday. They rarely are in Sacramento these days.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers are as bleak as they are familiar:

14,600 jobs were lost from area payrolls from March 2010 to March 2011 – double that of the second-worst Memphis metro area's 7,500-job decrease.

Area jobs disappeared at the sharpest rate among the 36 metro areas with more than 750,000 workers, down 1.8 percent.

Only Las Vegas and the Inland Empire's jobless rates were higher than the region's 12.7 percent among the 1 million-plus metro areas.

So, how did Sacramento get here and what will it take to pull itself out of the ditch?

Jeff Michael, director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, said the problem is that Sacramento's economy sits on a two-legged stool of government and real estate/construction, and both legs have been kicked out from under us.